CMHFlyerOH

I know that credit card "churning" for miles is a controversial topic on this forum, but just out of curiosity:

(1) How many miles have people accumulated through credit card churning, with what airlines over what period of time?

(2) Has anyone encountered problems securing good interest rates on morgage or vehicle purchases? I know that based on other threads that churning has a negligible effect on credit scores but are creditors turned off by customers who have opened and closed many credit card accounts in a short period of time in spite of having excellent credit scores?

Thanks for sharing!

centrum

After receiving my new Amex SPG I discovered that my credit score dropped 8 points with nothing else changing. Perhaps this is applicable just to myself. Perhaps this is insignificant? But I would expect a much greater point drop per new credit card if multiple applications were submitted in a much shorter time frame. Consequently interest rates on loans and mortgages would change as well. I am going to monitor my credit score over the next few months.

Marysunshine

I have gotten tons of miles by churning cards. I have gone through about 5 Citibank AA cards, three UA Visa cards, one US airways card and my credit score is 760. I am still in possession of 3 of the Citibank cards because when I went to cancel two I was offered miles to keep them. I have the Starwood Amex, one visa left from UA, a Macy's card, a Hilton card and the US Airways card. Apparently my credit has not been damaged by all the cards and I've gotten many, many miles. Of course, YMMV.

Counsellor

Eight points is calculation dust. It could be caused by almost anything (e.g., if the monthly charge on a credit card blipped from 20% of max to 25% of max) or nothing (the three scores are seldom the same even though each reporting agency seems to have the same data on me).

gleff

My middle score is 796, and it's that low only because of the low average age of my accounts (partially due to churn and partially just 'cause I'm still pretty young as far as these things go). Just got an outstanding mortgage rate and not a question was asked about my very long list of cards in my history...

We do know that
(1) generally more unused credit is good, since it pushes your utilization down (it shows you manage credit well -- you get credit and don't run it up)
(2) applications or 'hard pulls' can push down your credit for a short period of time (6 months) - the idea is that if you're applying for a bunch of credit you might be preparing to go on an irresponsible binge with it, or it might reflect something financially wrong

Here's something I don't know but wondered -- is there some length to the limit of a credit file? Would a file get split at some point because it's simply become too long? I guess not, probably a long shot, but it just occured to me?

deant

A credit report will not get split because it is too long. The "hard pulls" stay on your report for approximately 2 years. One interesting thing is that I use Experian and they allow you to modifiy the factors on your report to see what would happen if you had less hard pulls, no mortgage etc. I checked and the impact of churning cards is about 20 points on my score. Not a big deal.

BSRdr

This isn't entirely true. You can actually drop hard inquiries off of a credit report by generating enough soft inquiries. You would need a service that will allow you daily soft pulls though.

maulah

And that service would be ?

skofarrell

I do not believe there is any length limitations on the file itself. My Equifax report has over 40 active and inactive accounts on it. The oldest dates back to 1986.

Individual payment history is kept for 81 months, on the 82nd month, the oldest is bumped off.

andol469

You can use www.privacymatters.com for daily soft pulls of all three credit reports. I got mine for $14.95 for the year.

Also, credit reports can indeed split. This is discussed in great length at www.creditboards.com

skofarrell

Nope. Again, from an Equifax point of view, hard inquires are kept seperate from the soft ones.

andol469

Experian does not remove hard Inq's because of soft pulls, but Equifax and Transunion most certainly do, from personal experience.

skofarrell

I don't know what to tell you, I'm looking at my EQ report run last month, and there are 8 hard inquires in a seperate category. I see one that dates back to late 2004. The soft ones are underneath and there are a couple of dozen...

andol469

Yeah, they're organized separately on the report to differentiate between hard and soft. It seems though that they are "stored" in the same manner, and there is a finite number of inquiries or a finite amount of data each report can hold. Eventually, "new" data will replace "old" data. At least this is the case for Transunion and Equifax, not Experian it seems. Too much overall data can cause splitting, however.

I'm using vague terms beause I don't want to get too much into specifics but this is well-documented on credit forums. A simple search on one of those sites for "bump" would probably turn up many results with better detail.

dglewis76

I've gone thru 4 AA credit cards ( 3 mastercard + one Amex), 2 NWA visa, 1 starwoods, 1 delta, 2 US airways, 2 United, 1 Mariott in the past 1.5 years. I have not really worried too much about the score dipping (have not checked since I'm reassured by others on this board) since I bought a house 1 year ago and won't be buying a car for a while. I think the total mileage earned is 150,000 miles.
My wife has gone thru 3 AA credit cars, 1 delta, 1 US airways, 1 Delta.